 on key matters of foreign policy and national security. So we greatly applaud all efforts of bipartisanship, especially all the ways in which people with differing viewpoints come together for significant action. And we are delighted to launch the series today with two highly respected, very committed members who agree on the need for the United States, above all, to be a leader on human rights, which is our theme for today. I'm pleased to be joined this morning by Congressman Randy Hultgren from Illinois and Congressman James McGovern from Massachusetts. There are our inaugural bipartisan Congressional Dialogue speakers today on human rights as a foundation for peace. And I'm sure as many of you know, Congressman Hultgren and Congressman McGovern are co-chairs of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. And this is the commission that leads Congress on advancing international human rights. This is a critical value that has long been of bipartisan importance. The commission was actually established by the House. In 2008, it was preceded by the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, which was founded in 1983 by Congressman Tom Lantos and Congressman John Porter. So in just this 115th Congress alone, the commission has already had dozens of hearings, many, many events on human rights issues worldwide. So as we'll discuss this morning, human rights abuses are both the cause and the result of violent conflict around the world. So we are keenly aware here at USIP of the critical relationship between human rights and violence. And through the years, we have supported human rights champions as a part of our work and also published many seminal works looking at the links between human rights and conflict, human rights the rule of law, human rights abuse and violent extremism. So it's a critical topic. We look forward to a great discussion. Members of the audience who are watching via webcast, please feel free to tweet questions with the hashtag bipartisan USIP. And we will, after some remarks and a conversation, open up for questions from the audience. So please be thinking about that. And so please join me in welcoming Congressman Randy Hulkern and Congressman James McGovern up to the stage. Wonderful. And thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Great. My pleasure. I would like to ask you, Congressman Hulkern, to start us off if you'd like to make a few opening comments. Well, thank you, Nancy. Thank you all so much for being here. Good morning. And grateful for the US Institute of Peace for hosting this important event this morning. I was always pleased to be joined with my really good friend and colleague, distinguished co-worker for things that we believe are so important. Jim McGovern, who's co-chairman of our Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, he really is a mentor to me in many ways of how to do this well. And I'm grateful for his friendship. Through my work over the last few years on the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, I'm acutely aware of violent conflict, war crimes, and the suppression of freedom of belief and expression that continue to ravage lives of people and communities around the world. As human rights advocates, you are certainly aware of these challenges. Incorporating human rights into foreign policy is complex, but necessary work that requires a contextual understanding of ever-changing situations and crises. As we seek to mitigate or prevent intractable conflicts, we must be clear about what we are hoping to achieve. Peace and stability is impossible, apart from human rights. In fact, human rights gives us a clear framework for the kind of peace that we're trying to achieve. As policymakers, we must uphold the human rights framework as our guide for how we help solve conflicts and strengthen stability around the world. For me, that has taken the form of encouraging other governments to pursue their interests in ways that are consistent with the human rights commitments that have been made through international treaties. Violating these treaties by perpetrating large-scale human rights abuses destabilizes their country, their region, and ultimately hurts their credibility for partnership with other countries on the international stage. A country or government that is stable or that has created so-called peace through the use of fear or authoritarianism is not ultimately a reliable ally or partner for the US. We must convince our allies that, in addition to being in line with international law, human rights policies are also in their best interest. One example of our advocacy for human rights recently got us banned from traveling to the Philippines. Co-Chairman McGovern and I wrote a letter urging President Trump on his visit to the country to discuss the recent large number of extrajudicial killings taking place there. We acknowledge that the Philippines absolutely is a valuable ally, but that, as such, we did not want that to be used as a presumption to ignore the rule of law or wantonly kill civilians. President Duterte expressed his outrage with us through the media, but he was reminded that Congress cares about human rights. While we encourage governments to uphold their human rights commitments, we recognize that human rights advocacy often comes from the ground up. From ordinary people whose basic universal rights are being violated, these people, members of the general population, are intimately familiar with human rights because they're in an active fight to secure them for themselves, their family, and their society. Repressive governments will accuse us of forcing our will and our values on them, but their citizens are actively advocating for the freedom to express themselves according to their own conscience. I think one of these areas where we can make the biggest difference is by directly supporting these human rights defenders as they fight for the rights of their own people. These are the people who put their own lives and often even their own freedom of their families on the line in order to secure basic freedoms for their society. When these advocates find themselves imprisoned for their efforts, we can advocate for them by highlighting their situation and by magnifying their message and their cause. A few weeks ago, Co-Chairman McGovern and I introduced House Resolution 750 calling for supportive prisoners of conscience and for President Trump to designate a Prisoners of Conscience Day to annually draw attention to these kinds of human rights heroes. This legislation seeks to strengthen the voice of religious leaders, civil activists, lawyers, journalists, and others who have sacrificed their own freedom in the cause of universal human rights. We must use the tools at our disposal to encourage governments to listen to the desires of their people and at the very least to not approve or tacitly support authoritarian policies. So again, I wanna thank you for your work. Thank you for the privilege for being here and I look forward to a good, lively, bipartisan discussion this morning. Thank you. Well, thank you. I wanna thank Nancy and I wanna thank the US Institute for Peace for welcoming us here today and for co-hosting this bipartisan discussion and I'm looking forward to it and I'm grateful to be here with my colleague, Randy Hulkerin, who I admire and I am inspired by his commitment to human rights and we work well as a team and I'm grateful to a lot of the people in this audience who have offered us support at the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, who have kind of elevated that commission into something that I think has earned the attention and the respect of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle and have convinced our respective leaderships how necessary it is to have a commission that is focused exclusively on the issue of human rights. While members of Congress clearly have policy differences, many of us look for constructive ways to move forward in spite of those. My old boss, Congressman Joe Mowkley used to say you don't have to agree on everything to agree on something and it turns out that a lot of the something we agree on is in the area of human rights and I think highlighting issues on which there is common ground can be an important contribution to making our government work better for not only the American people but in terms of contributing in a positive way to the world. So I'm grateful for all the support that has been provided to us. Foreign policy is an arena in which there are many important bipartisan achievements and some that come to mind, the 1991 Nun Luger program for securing and dismantling weapons of mass destruction, the 2002 McGovern Dole program to support education, child development and food security and low income food deficit countries around the globe and more recently the 2016 Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act which authorizes financial sanctions and visa restrictions on foreign persons in response to human rights violations and acts of corruption. So these are just three examples but there are many more. Some initiatives like sanctions programs or support for international justice tribunals are focused on punishing human rights violations. Others are about reducing the risk of the sorts of situations that can lead to human rights abuses like conventional and nuclear war but not only war. You know when people hear human rights and peace building in the same sentence, the first thing they likely think about is armed conflict, how to end it and how to address the human rights abuses that its victims suffered. Dealing with the consequences of the brutal tactics used in wars in places like El Salvador and Columbia is one of the main ways that I've been involved in human rights issues during my years in Congress and it's very important to victims as a contribution to peace building. But more and more I'm convinced that we must focus on human rights from a prevention perspective. The situations of human rights abuses that are brought to our attention in the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission oftentimes do involve war. Syria and Yemen are clear examples but at least as often we're asked what Congress can do in response to situations of systematic discrimination and abuse carried out by a government against a subset of its own people. Those people may be ethnic, cultural or religious minorities like the Tibetans and Uyghurs in China, the Bahá'í in Iran, Christians in Egypt, non-Arab people in Sudan or the Rohingya in Burma or they may be majorities ruled by minorities like the Shia in Bahrain or they may be political opponents as in Russia or Turkey or as civil society actors such as journalists and bloggers in Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh or Mexico or defense lawyers in China or they may be gay as in Russia and Egypt and many other places. In these kinds of situations, human rights abuses are the product of a country's internal political dynamics. That complicates the efforts of those of us in Congress or the US government who look for ways to respond. But what we know is that these situations are warning signs. When governments systematically discriminate against some of their people, sooner or later we are likely to see radicalization and increased conflict, even armed conflict that can spill over borders. And when that happens, governments will double down on repression and in the post-911 era they will cloak their crackdown in the discourse of anti-terrorism. This is exactly what is happening in Burma. In closing, let me say that I believe the bipartisan consensus on the importance of human rights as a pillar of US foreign policy remains fairly solid. But I also think we face renewed challenges from regimes that are authoritarian, whether du jour or de facto and feel empowered in the current international environment. And I'm sad to say an environment that has been made more complicated by the lack of focus on human rights by our own current administration. Some of those same regimes are facilitating and prolonging brutal wars with devastating humanitarian and geopolitical consequences. So we're struggling to find effective pro-human rights ways forward to respond to these regimes. And that is our current task. I'm convinced that this requires more than military projection. We need clear-eyed engagement, robust diplomacy, multilateral strategies, long-term development aid and programming and across the board commitment to rule of law. We need to be thinking out of the box. And we need to lead by example. You know, it has become too convenient and too common to rationalize or explain away or ignore, in some cases, human rights abuses around the world. We have, it's oftentimes we hear, well, we have economic interests or we have military or strategic interests or we have no interests as a way to justify our lack of action. And I think those are just excuses. And sometimes, you know, because of the magnitude of some of the human rights atrocities that we are witnessing and the multitude of human rights challenges around the world, people get overwhelmed. I'm reminded of the words of Archibald McLeish, who once said, you know, we're inundated with so many facts and figures and statistics that sometimes I feel we're losing our human ability to feel them. And I worry about that sometimes. But what I do know is that while we're not perfect here in the United States, I think we have a moral obligation to champion the cause of human rights. And we need to do better. And especially in this very dangerous and complicated world, I think our leadership on human rights is more important than ever. Thank you. Thank you both. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your commitment to these issues. And before we dive into the questions of human rights, can I start with a question of, you know, we have a spirit of increasing lack of bipartisanship on the Hill right now. How is it working that you all are able to maintain this partnership? What do you need to do to find that way to work together? Well, you know, I think it is, if you want to just kind of fall into the momentum or flow, I think it is easy to want to attack, want to fight. And I think for many of us, I wanna get something done. I wanna be impactful for this whatever time I have to serve. And so I also have, we've made a commitment just to build friendships. And it's really hard to hate somebody that you're a friend with and that you respect and that you don't always agree with, but to come to really honestly see that these are good people trying to do good things. We have different tactics, maybe of how we wanna achieve what we wanna achieve, but have common outcome desires, I think. And so I think it is taking that extra time and effort, maybe to get to know somebody a little bit more to find exactly like Jim said, just because we don't agree on everything doesn't mean we agree on some things. And I would say it's way more than some things. I think it's many things, most things we actually can come to agreement on. So I think it is taking that extra time, getting to know each other, having a basic level of respect that we're approaching challenges from and then hopefully coming together and finding solutions that maybe can make a difference. What do you think, Jim? Yeah, I mean, what he's not telling you is we drink heavily. No, I'm just... Yeah. Start early. Yeah, yeah. But look, I think what Randy just said is correct. Look, especially on this topic, we have a lot in common. And I think we both recognize that we're a lot more influential and effective when we're working in a bipartisan way. Sending letters to whether it's the administration or to foreign governments are more effective when Democrats and Republicans are joined together on those appeals. And so, and we have had a... I've lost how many track, how many hearings and briefings we've had, but we meet almost as much as the Rules Committee, which I'm also on, if not more, but... Quite as late. We have, I mean, sitting through these hearings and hearing the stories of human rights defenders, hearing of the challenges that people are facing and difficult situations in various countries around the world. I mean, again, you wouldn't be human if it didn't affect you. And I think that, I think we, our passion on this issue of human rights has grown because of what we have heard and what we have seen. And so, and you know, and he's a nice guy too. And so that's also helps. And so we get along well and we have a shared commitment and it works. And hopefully others will follow our example. So too. And what inspired you to take up the issue of human rights? How did you come to the Lantos Commission? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think it really was people I respect greatly. Jim had been doing work on this and Frank Wolf, someone who was impactful for me, who was someone that was a mentor of mine early on when I was a new member of Congress and just seeing some of the work that he had done. I think also part of it certainly is faith and this respect for freedom of belief or freedom of no belief, that that is something that is an important thing and that I want that to be continued here. And then I would say a specific issue that really sparked something in me different than maybe anything else was just becoming more aware of human trafficking and the depth of the problem, the seriousness of the problem and thinking that it's a problem way out there somewhere and it is, but it's also a problem in Chicago where I'm from and that it is to me unconscionable for us to continue to go through life ignorant and unaware when in reality there are people who literally are being bought and sold, used up and thrown away, right here, right now and I just, I can't sit by and not do something or say something. So I think those are a few of the things that sparked my interest and desire to want to get involved in the Lantos Human Rights Commission. Yeah, well for me it goes back to when I was a young age working for Congressman Joe Mowkley of Massachusetts. It was in the early 1980s and there were many Salvadoran refugees coming to the United States and some of them made their way to Boston and met with him during some local office hours and were asking for his help to protect them so they wouldn't get deported. And he called me up and said, I'm meeting with these Salvadorans and they're telling me these horror stories. Is it really as bad as they say in El Salvador? Why don't you go down there and check it out? And so I went down to El Salvador and spent a couple of weeks and it was as bad if it was worse than they described it. And that began this effort that I worked with him on to try to protect the Salvadorans. So it resulted in him writing and passing the temporary protected status statute. And then surely after that was passed the six Jesuit priests and their housekeeper and daughter were murdered in El Salvador and he was asked to lead the investigation and I was his key staff person and spent a great deal of time investigating the murders of these priests. And I think what I learned from those experiences in El Salvador was one, I saw up close and personal human suffering like I had never with this before. And two, a greater sense of responsibility as a United States citizen because our government was supporting the government of El Salvador that was responsible for much of the killing. And years later I got elected to Congress and I got to know Tom Lantos and he asked me to show up to, well then it was a caucus and I would go on a regular basis and learned a lot from him but realized that this stuff is important. And I think one of the things that I think Randy would attest to is that this is more than just a place to vent, right? Sometimes interventions result in saving people's lives. Sometimes it results in changing policy. I mean the Magnitsky Act, for example, came out of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. I mean, they're countless prisoners of conscience. Randy mentioned the resolution we have that have basically been saved or released because of intervention. So this work is important and it's effective. So here's a question that often gets asked a lot and that's the tension between advocating for human rights and a country's sovereignty and some people's assertion that, well we need to balance our commitment to human rights with our strategic interests that may sometimes be in conflict. How do you, how does the Lantos Commission deal with this and how do you see this conversation unfolding these days on the Hill? Couple thoughts, one is I think almost everything that we have worked on, the hearings, Jim talked about dozens and dozens of hearings that we've had, but I would say almost everyone has come to us through someone from that country, from that area, from family members, something like that who is very concerned about abuse that's happening. So it's not like we're sitting down, pulling out a map and say, hey, let's go after this place. It really is people coming to us and saying, we're not sure if you're aware of this, but we want you to know what's happening. And through great staff, friends who are doing great work or through Jim and I and the connections that we've made or through colleagues who are part of our commission, decide this is important for us to have a hearing on this. So our hope is again to make sure that those voices are heard of those people from those countries who feel like they're being abused or neglected or imprisoned or killed and speaking up for them. It's a balance. We're putting appropriate pressure on other nations where we think that this is the right decision, that human rights and basic recognition of value of people, even people who are different than us or have different beliefs than us is important to my own freedom to believe or not believe or freedom to again have value. So I think it is looking for ways to put pressure, not saying we wanna take over, we want you just to act responsibly. And we are coming alongside some of your own people to hopefully strengthen their voice. I would say like Jim said, I'm consistently surprised that people actually pay attention that presidents of other countries or governments or whatever, it matters when Congress is paying attention and it saves lives. And one thing I would say too that the challenge, I think is it's so big. There's just so many places. We sponsored a showing here in DC a few months ago of Ai Weiwei's documentary, Human Flow. If you haven't had a chance to see that, I really encourage you to see it. It's a powerful, powerful movie, but it's also overwhelming of how many conflicts there are in every part in the world. And it could become paralyzing, as Jim said, but I think our hope is not to get paralyzed, but instead let's pick a couple people or a couple spots and let's see if we can help there and then let's help a few more and then let's help a few more. And pretty soon it's pretty significant impact. And given that long list, and you mentioned a few in your speech as well, what are the priorities right now? What are you urging your colleagues in the House to focus on? Well, again, the list is long. I mean, we're trying to get our colleagues now involved in this campaign to adopt a prisoner of conscience. We want to make sure that everybody has at least a one or two people that they're going to champion and be a voice for. We're doing that. But look, we're doing hearings on what's happening in Burma. We're doing hearings on what's happening in Colombia, in China, there's a big list, but we just want people to be engaged and to be aware and to be part of pushing for a solution. And just in answer to your question about sovereignty, don't forget these sovereign countries have all signed treaties and agreements, right? I mean, so I mean, they've all said they're going to follow a certain set of standards. And when they come back at us and claim their sovereignty, they don't say that, well, we have to, it's our sovereign right to abuse our people. I mean, they just complain about our interference and then they'll start talking about all of our inadequacies. That's fine. We're not perfect. But the bottom line is, on the issue of human rights, I mean, to me, we believe these rights are universal. And I tried one time to get into Sudan a few years ago and they won't give me a visa. I'm getting more and more countries are not letting me in anymore. But... Have you tried to go to the Philippines? I don't think either of us will leave you. Not anytime soon. Yeah, I'm afraid it won't come out if I go. But I remember, I was in Chad and we went to a displaced persons camp and at that time, the International Criminal Court were taking interviews for people for an indictment against President Bashir. And I remember listening to this woman tell her story and about how she basically had seen her whole family wiped out in front of her. It was heartbreaking, but I just remember her stoically and calmly telling the story. And afterwards, I went up and I didn't know what to say. I just said, thank you for sharing that. I think it will help. And her response was, if I didn't think that this story would matter, then I would have no reason to live. I'm hoping that this will actually change things. And I think of that woman, you know, all the time. And I mean, when it comes to human rights, you know, these are universal rights. We're gonna open it up for questions. Do we have mics coming around? Yes, we do. So if people want to raise their hands, let's see, let's start back there with Scott. Right in the, who's standing up right now? There we go. Some of who knows these issues well, welcome. Scott Busby from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the State Department across the street. Thank you both for your leadership on these issues and the support the commission and the Congress has given to our bureau and the profile you've given to our work. I'm curious about connections you may have with colleagues in other legislatures or parliaments around the world. Are there those sorts of discussions where you share ideas about things, say like the global Magnitsky Sanctions or other things. Is there any sort of formal dialogue with other legislatures around these issues? Yeah, for me at least, it's maybe not as formal. I mean, there has been opportunities. As we travel, we were even talking about that today of different places when we have meetings to make sure that this is a part of our discussion of bringing up human rights abuses or how people are being treated in those countries. So I think it has been more personal connections there or when we have delegations from other nations come in where we'll meet, Jim and I will meet or our staff will meet with them to hear. So are you involved in any more? Yeah, I mean a lot of these parliamentary groups, human rights groups come around all the time and we meet with them and we have a semi-formal relationship. So sometimes when we're doing something on a particular topic, we share with them what we're doing, hopefully they'll do the same thing. We've done that on the Magnitsky Act, we're doing that on Tibet, we're doing that on a whole range of issues. And we need to get better at it. But we need to formalize these relationships a little bit more. One of the challenges we have on the Lantos Commission is that we don't have a big staff, right? We have some very dedicated individuals who work with us, but we have no funding for anything, right? That's hopefully changing. But within those constraints, I think we have established some good relationships with our counterparts in other countries, Canada, Europe, I mean, Australia, we've had people from all over the place and so we do work with them, we stay in touch with them. Okay, we have a lot of hands. Let's go back there, right? And then stage over here, this young, yeah. Hi, my name is Peter Burns, I'm with In Defense of Christians. Thank you so much for your leadership, this is such an important issue. How do you guys, or what have you seen as an effective way to engage with our allies who kind of step over the line in the years of human rights violation, religious freedom violation, maybe even specifically looking at Turkey as an ally that we've worked closely with over the years, but now is getting into some darker places? Great question. So the question, how do we deal with our allies who are doing bad things, is that the, right, yeah. A nice summation, yeah. Yeah, I think we need to deal with them more forcefully. I don't think we should be congratulating Turkey on its behavior given what's going on there. I mean, people are being jailed, people are being tortured, it is a mess of a situation and it goes back to what I said at the very beginning. You know, you ignore these human rights challenges at great peril because it results in radicalization, it results in destabilization, I mean, and you know, I always tell people, you know, if we are truly a friend, friends can be critics. I'm not a very good friend. If I turn a blind eye when you're behaving badly, I'm a better friend when I tell you you need to change and you know, we're gonna pressure you to change because you can do better. And I think that's kind of a challenge. And I just say one other thing too. You know, I mentioned in my opening remarks we need to be thinking, you know, more boldly, a little bit more out of the box on how we deal with some of these issues. We need to engage the business community much more directly because, you know, again, so much of our relationship, you know, in the world of economic relations, you know, and yet, you know, in some of the countries that have some of the worst human rights records, we have very vigorous business relations. We need the business community can use its voice more. These countries still want to do business. It would help if we had a little bit more wind at our back with some of the people in our business community. Yeah, I would say too, just we talk through it, try and figure out specifically strategy. You know, is it letters? Is it meeting with our administration who maybe are gonna be having some connections with some of our allies pushing that human rights be part of any sort of economic discussion or other things that we're doing there? And then I think it is hearings that are getting some coverage and putting some pressure on there, bringing people in who don't feel like they have a voice in that country right now, but hopefully trying to raise their voice so it can be heard. And I mean, it's definitely has ruffled some feathers, but that's kind of the point. I mean, that's really what we're trying to do in a way, again, that we care about these places, these people, these countries, these relationships. We want them to be going well, but exactly like Jim said, I think friends have that responsibility to hold each other accountable. And that is our hope, my hope out of this, is that's really what we're trying to do. So we have a lot of hands, so I'm gonna take a couple of questions. We'll start with you and then you pass it to the, right in front and then over across the aisle. Thank you both. Really wonderful to hear what you have to say and to see you both coming together across the aisle. I guess my question is how we as citizens and constituents can encourage our members of Congress to do more of that, especially in this climate politically and with all the domestic issues that are grabbing, you know, attention. I guess if you have any particular suggestions, obviously speaking to our members of Congress, letters maybe requesting meetings with them, but I guess any particular thoughts on strategies or personal stories or what most influences you as an elected official and how we can encourage our own elected officials to follow your lead. Good question. If you could pass it right in front. Yep. You guys have both talked a lot about how the US should be a champion for enforcing international treaties that concern human rights and one of the kind of up and coming ways to do that is the International Criminal Court, which the US is not a part of. So I was wondering what both of your opinion and the opinion of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission is on the US joining the International Criminal Court. And then pass it across the aisle. Thank you very much, Nancy. Edward Joseph, Johns Hopkins Seiss and the National Council on US Libby Relations salute the work of both you gentlemen and Nancy salute this great initiative of USIP. My two quick questions that both inspired by words and phrases that Congressman McGovern mentioned. One was Magnitsky. The other was the word responsibility. On Magnitsky, I worked for your colleague from the Senate, Senator Ben Cardin, back in 2009 when the plight of Mr. Magnitsky came to a first kintelite and Congress started moving on this. My question is, what would you say to those who would attack this approach on the basis of US-Russia relations? So if you could just widen the aperture slightly and talk about the impact of this, because it has an effect on potentially as a model for other countries, including the UK up to this recent spy incident. And the other one was responsibility. Congressman McGovern, as you both know, the US in 2011 had the key role, a key role in removing Qaddafi from Libya. Today, last year there were almost 300,000 migrants who attempted to cross to Europe. Almost 3,000, according to UNHCR, lost their lives at sea. There are still, according to IOM, 350,000 migrants and asylum seekers in Libya, in some of them in horrible conditions, even subject to torture. So again, I come back to your word responsibility. Given the particular role we had in removing Qaddafi, does the United States have a greater responsibility to engage in Libya? And are you satisfied with what the US is doing? Could we be doing more? Thank you. Thanks. So three great questions. How to encourage bipartisanship. What about the ICC responsibility in Libya and the Magnitsky Act? Oh, yeah, a lot there. Hit it. We'll just kind of go back and forth a little bit. Yeah. You know, I'll just jump in. Whichever one you want. We need you and you're a member of Congress. Your senators need you to be a voice. I would say absolutely meet with your member of Congress or for sure their staff who is doing human rights work or ought to be doing human rights work. Let them know your passion. Let them know why you care about this issue and the work that you're doing and that you are willing to be a resource for them. I do think stories matter. So certainly telling kind of a global picture is important but telling a real story of a real person or a real family resonates more deeply. And so I think if you can help us understand that and then build that relationship and come alongside one of our biggest challenges that we face with the Lantos Commission is everything else that's going on. I mean, it is a fire hose every day of issues, challenges, information. And so trying to get people's attention, our colleagues' attention even just for a few minutes is really hard. But it's important and it makes a difference. So, and I think helping our colleagues see that they really can't make a difference. You know, this prisoners of conscience thing, that was another thing that really got me involved in this. Jim and Frank Wolfe had really started this work of encouraging us to adopt prisoners of conscience. I had adopted Zhu Yu Fu, a Chinese prisoner a few years ago. And several times, multiple times a year, I'll get up on the house floor and talk about his condition, his mistreatment, his inability to be able to see his family. And because of that, we're seeing impact, hoping again, hearing good reports of his release, but you know, again, such incredible, horrible mistreatment. So telling real stories makes a real difference and I would say the same thing for us. And encouraging our colleagues, and I think one of the frustrations a lot of us have is we want to have big impact. And I think that's so important, but also by having smaller targeted impact can lead to big impact as well. So I think starting that process, building up some momentum. So first question there, maybe I'll. Yeah, so I mean, I agree with everything you just said, all right? And I just say this, the one thing every member of Congress, Democratic, Republican, have in common is we all want to get reelected. So when people come and they ask us to do things, I mean, that helps. I mean, if nobody ever raises the issue of human rights or it raises the importance of joining the Atlanta's Commission, people aren't mind readers, right? I mean, so I think it's important to be engaged. And this Prisoners of Conscience campaign, I think there's one way to do it. I have Nabil Rajab of Bahrain and the Panchin Lama, who I don't, we don't know where, I think the longest serving prisoner of conscience that we know of. On the International Criminal Court, I mean, I personally believe we should join. I've always felt that way. I mean, and it's kind of funny because we regularly invoke the International Criminal Court to make our points about someone's really bad or we gotta hold this person accountable. But yet, we kind of exempt ourselves from it. I guess the fear is that we don't like to be subjected to any authorities other than what's in our internal borders. I think that's a little bit of arrogance. That's just my own personal view. But I think there's great value in the International Criminal Court. And I think that in a lot of these international treaties that we haven't signed on to, I think we ought to. On the Magnitsky Act, you know, originally it was, I introduced it, originally it was introduced as a global and then it got narrowed down to Russia. I mean, obviously the inspiration was the case of Sergei Magnitsky. It got narrowed down originally because of a cost issue, believe it or not. Not whether it made sense to do it globally or not. We have since passed the Global Magnitsky Act and so there is, and they've recently come up with their first list. And so we welcome the input as these lists continue. And I think it's a good way to send a message and to hold people who are human rights abuses accountable without punishing, you know, everybody in a particular country who may have nothing to do with the atrocity. And in terms of responsibility, I agree with you. I'm heartbroken at the plight of refugees from Libya, from Syria, from so many other places in the world. We have the most refugees, I think, in recorded history. And I think we do have a responsibility that we are not living up to, quite frankly. And it bothers me greatly because I think it diminishes our standing in the world. And, you know, I mentioned the first guy involved in this working with Salvadoran refugees. One of our arguments to protecting Salvadoran refugees is that we took sides in the war. So we had a responsibility because we were engaged in creating some of the chaos that occurred in that country. And so we should assume the responsibility of the refugees who were fleeing violence. I feel the same way in Libya. I feel the same way in so many other parts of the world. And I think it's getting a little bit tired for us to be complaining that other countries need to do more when we're not. So, yeah, but look, and as I think Randy would say, politically, this is a tough issue. And, you know, and there's a lot of fear that has been created. Some of the rhetoric coming out of some of our leaders has made people fear that anybody coming from Syria or Libya is not going to be a friend could do us harm. And it's an irrational fear. It is a baseless fear. But nonetheless, it is something that politically, people have to deal with. And my hope is we can get beyond that. But we do have a responsibility. Just for me, following up with a couple, I haven't come out real strongly when we were the other with the International Court. I'm open to it. I would struggle a little bit and even internally struggle of wanting to hold other countries accountable, but also feel like, for the most part, our system works pretty well. Always can be better. So we're working through that, but haven't taken a strong position. I would absolutely agree with Jim that we have a responsibility in these areas. And Jim and I together have been a strong voice of wanting refugee programs. And that has been such a part of who we are as a nation as that place of refuge, if there's no other place, and especially when we've been involved in those situations. So we're doing what we can to make sure that we are acting responsibly, that these programs are not being diminished. And yet I'm really concerned they are. And in some cases, completely being shut down in certain areas. And so there again, we've got to redouble our efforts of educating and getting back to the reality of how many refugees there are. And we're going to need help, but we also have to be part of that help. And so that is someplace that we're just not doing a good enough job of having that communication of what's our responsibility and how can we work with other partners around the world. And I still believe for the most part in most of these places, as I've talked to people, they would rather their homeland be a safe place where they could live, where they could raise their family, where they could continue on the generations that have gone before them. They don't want to be refugees. And so I think that is, again, going back of what can we do to put pressure earlier to get countries and leaders to act in a way that treats their people respectfully, treats them humanely. And I think that's what the goal is. I know that's optimistic, very optimistic, that they would do that. But we've got to be optimistic. We've got to continue to push for that. So we have time for, I'll take two last questions. We'll go here and then back there. If we can stage a mic back there. Hi, Elisa Massimino with Human Rights First. Thank you both so much for your leadership. And Nancy, thank you for reminding this town that there is bipartisan agreement around shared value. It's so important. One of the things, here we are at the US Institute of Peace talking about respect for human rights as the foundation of peace and security. We're going to celebrate the 70th anniversary this year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is really a security document, a way to prevent global war. So my question is about the line between war and peace and what it means to have a Congress that is not really grappling with where we are at war, because the rules of war are very different. And I think now, with our country, having been at war for longer than my kids have been alive practically, that paradigm threatens to swallow up the whole concept of human rights. And what are you going to do about it? Oh, boy. OK. And then last question. Hi, my name is Marie Alejandra from the Washington Office on Latin America. Earlier, Representative McGovern, you talked about the importance of engaging businesses. But in some countries, especially Colombia, there's some complicity in human rights abuses on the part of the international businesses or domestic businesses. How do we address those? OK, well, two just small little questions that we'll use that to finish up and please use the time to make whatever additional statement. I'll just go quick and then I'll end it up. I think you're right. I mean, it is really hard and it gets back to what I said of distractions and almost a numbness that I sense among colleagues on some of these issues. So we're going to keep doing what we can do. We need your help to help educate colleagues and recognize that our actions have consequences and certainly impact other places as well. I would say with business, it needs to be kind of case by case, country by country. But informing, letting people know, letting our consumers know, I think more than ever, people care about the products that they're using and how they were made, how people were treated as they were made. And I think that's a valuable, certainly first step, is to help people know what is going on and if there is complicity there by companies. And then I think looking for opportunities to continue to encourage or pressure them to be doing the right thing in these other countries. Has it gotten harder or easier to recruit other members to the cause, to these issues? Yeah, I mean, I think it's, to me, I haven't been involved that long, but it feels like it's getting more difficult every day just because everything else, the CRs, these deadline shutdown things that we're facing every couple of weeks. And I think it is more difficult because these self-inflicted crises that we put on ourselves make it more challenging to dig a little bit deeper. And these are things that require digging a little deeper. So on the issue of war and peace, I mean, one thing we might want to start doing is debating wars before we get into them, right? So some of us have been pushing for AUMF debates and I mean, and that's, and Congress has a constitutional responsibility and I think there is bipartisan concern that we are not living up to it. So let's talk about these things before we get into them and maybe discuss what the impacts may be. And then if we do get into wars, which I think war should always be a last resort, there are rules of war, right? And we, you know, and I get nervous sometimes when I hear people say, well, we have rules, but no one else says, well, we're different. We're setting a standard. And you know, yeah, we need to protect civilians and we need to respect people who are non-combatants. And so that has to be a part of the discussion as well. So I think that would be, that would go a long way if we could actually start debating these wars before we get into them. On the issue of Columbia and businesses and business in general, look, I mean, I think, you know, I mean, maybe there were some legislative vehicles that we can think of, but I'm now into the shaming, all right, and companies that are bad players in other countries, they need to be called out and we need to be pressuring them to be part of the solution. I mean, nobody should be buying rubies from Burma right now, right? I mean, we ought to be, you know, we ought to be making it clear, you know, that we care about these things. We want you, businesses, to do very, very well, but you know what, you can do well and you can earn a lot of money by doing the right thing. That's right. You know, supporting bad practices that abuse people's rights is something that it should be, you know, it's a no-brainer that it should be bad for business, but we ought to make it clear it's bad for your business and we're going to expose you. And so some of us are trying to figure out ways that we can do that better. And then the final thing I'm going to say is that, you know, look, Congress right now has a bad reputation. I mean, you know, we hear it from Democratic audiences and Republican audiences that you guys are kind of dysfunctional. Well, I think here is a case, all right, in this commission where we are functional, where we're operating in a way that I think people, Democrats and Republicans, could say this is the way it's supposed to work. We don't agree on every single thing, but we agree on most things and we are having an impact. And our hearings and our briefings are not characterized by finger-pointing, you're bad and I'm good and I'm, you know, whatever. It's basically we come together and we work together. And I think that, and I think as a result of that, we have been effective. And we need to find ways to enhance the influence of the Land-to-Human Rights Commission. But I think it's a good example for Democrats and Republicans on other committees. This is the way Congress should work. And so it's a great pleasure to work with my friend Randy. So thank you. We thank both of you, Congressman Holger and Congressman Govren. Thank you for, in that spirit, helping us to launch our bipartisan congressional dialogue series. Thank you for being the kind of visionary leaders committed to these issues that we really need right now and for giving us that inspiration that Congress is making a difference and I think all walking away very inspired and encouraged by the example that you both represent. I wanna invite everybody to join us for our next bipartisan congressional dialogue on April 17th, where we will have Representative Steve Pierce of New Mexico and Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut discussing counter-unilicit funding of terrorism, a congressional approach on April 17th. And we heard about the 70th anniversary coming up of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Maybe we can get you back for an anniversary event. Continue to inspire us. So please join me in thanking two very wonderful members of Congress. Thank you. Thank you. It's really great. Thank you. It's really great to have you here. Thank you.